Eastern Germany – the Most Atheistic Region in Europe

In idea Spektrum (the German equivalent of Christianity Today), there was an article about the status of evangelicalism in the former communist country of East Germany. Here is an excerpt.

Martin Luther’s homeland has turned into a pre-Christian mission field, according to the Lutheran theologian and journalist Uwe Siemon-Netto, director of the Institute on Lay Vocation at the Concordia Seminary of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod in St. Louis (Missouri).

At the recent event Siemon-Netto – born in Leipzig in 1936 - gave a lecture on the religious situation in East Germany. Less than a quarter of the population in Luther’s homeland is still Christian. Luther’s town, Wittenberg, counts about 15 percent church members, Protestant or Catholic. The same is true for Eisleben, where Luther was born in 1483 and where he died in 1546.

The former East Germany is the only European territory with an overwhelming majority of atheists – 65 percent of the population. In 1950, the Protestant churches in the Soviet occupied German Democratic Republic had 16 million members. Today, there are 3.4 million left.

This decline is partly due to a Christian brain drain. The swiftest and most competent East Germans – including disproportionately many Christians – have left the East for the more prosperous West. Among the core of the Protestant establishment used to be the educated and wealthy, the landowners, industrialists and craftsmen.

But, says Siemon-Netto, there is a ray of hope: “While it is true that the Eastern German society is the most atheistic in Europe, it is also true that the tiny and courageous Christian minority in Eastern Germany also tends to be the most faithful in the nation.”

For the complete article, click here.